I was reading the article by Stephanie Theobald in the Family section about tomboys, keen to relive my own short-haired, betrousered days of struggling to restrain myself from punching "squealy" girls in the face - physical violence against their frilly, ponytailed persons the only sure way, at the time, of ending their own constant aural assaults against the less relentlessly feminine.

Theobald justly mentioned George from the Famous Five, Scout Finch and Jo March as valuable role models for the tomboy, currently in danger of being submerged beneath a flood of glittery pink princess-and-fairy books. But there are others perhaps more widely suitable for the prime tomboy years of five to 10, when the pink tide is at its highest. I was aided in my own pre-pubescent struggle against wearing skirts and shiny shoes by Beverly Cleary's sparky, spirited heroine Ramona Quimby. Other tomboys of my acquaintance would make a bid here for Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking. I was never a fan - I wanted to be merely a boy, not an anarchist - so let us concentrate for now on the delightful Ramona, who has "brown hair, brown eyes and no cavities".

She is four when we first meet her, in Beezus and Ramona, wiping her paint-smeared hands on the neighbour's cat in Klickitat Street, slowly learning to negotiate the monkey bars in the park and the maddening world of school and grown-ups, and she is 10 (or "zeroteenth" as she dubs it in order to secure the respect she feels moving into double figures demands) by the time we leave her - monkey bars mastered, wider world semi-conquered - in Ramona's World.

Tomboyhood at that age is, I think, less to do with embryonic sexual orientation and more to do with dissatisfaction and anxiety about the expectations attached to girls - just that bit duller, worthier and constricting than those faced by boys. Your scabby knees were evidence of unfeminine behaviour. Theirs were badges of honour. Ramona, however, wore hers with pride.

Now I re-read the books and marvel at Cleary's ear for naturalistic dialogue, succinct and heartfelt evocations of childhood frustrations and her unfailing instinct for the secret motivations of children. But then, as an infant-schooler beset by squealers, it was Ramona - with her stubbornness, her inexhaustible curiosity, the noise she made, the exuberant fun she had and the space she unapologetically took up - whom I loved. And whom I love a little more every time a new glitter princess instalment hits the shelves.